Mother to Mother

My son killed your daughter. People look at me as though I did it. The generous ones as though I made him do it, as though I could make this child do anything. Starting from when he was less than six years old, even before he lost his first tooth or went to school. Starting, if truth be known, from before he was conceived; when he, with total lack of consideration if not downright malice, seeded himself inside my womb. But now, people look at me as if I’m the one who woke up one shushu day and said, Boyboy, run out and see whether, somewhere out there, you can find a white girl with nothing better to do than run around Guguletu, where she does not belong.

White people live in their own areas and mind their own business — period. We live here, fight and kill each other. That is our business. You don’t see big words on every page of the newspapers because one of us kills somebody, here in the townships. But with this case of Boyboy’s even the white woman I work for showed me. The story was all over the place. Pictures too.

[…]

Why is it that the government now pays for his food, his clothes, the roof over his head? Where was the government the day my son stole my neighbour's hen; wrung its neck and cooked it — feathers and all, because there was no food in the house and I was away, minding the children of the white family I worked for? […] Why now, when he’s an outcast, does my son have a better roof over his head than ever before in his life? Living a better life, if chained? I do not understand why it is that the government is giving him so much now when it has given him nothing at all, all his life.

My Sister-Mother, we are bound in this sorrow. You, as I, have not chosen this coat that you wear. It is heavy on our shoulders, I should know. It is heavy, only God knows how. We were not asked whether we wanted it or not. We did not choose, we are the chosen.

But you, remember this, let it console you some, you never have to ask yourself: What did I not do for this child? You can carry your head sky high. You have no shame, no reason for shame. Only the loss. Irretrievable loss. Be consoled, however. Be consoled, for with your loss comes no shame. No deep sense of personal failure. Only glory. Unwanted and unasked for, I know. But let this be your source of strength, your fountain of hope, the light that illumines the depth of your despair.

And my son? What had he to live for?

My son. His tomorrows were his yesterday. Nothing. Stretching long, lean, mean, and empty. A glaring void. Nothing would come of the morrow. For him. Nothing at all. Long before the ground split when he pee’d on it, that knowledge was firmly planted in his soul ... it was intimately his.

He had already seen his tomorrows; in the defeated stoop of his father’s shoulders. In the tired eyes of that father’s friends. In the huddled, ragged men who daily wait for chance at some job whose whereabouts they do not know ... wait at the corners of roads leading nowhere ... wait for a van to draw up, a shout, a beckoning hand that could mean a day’s job for an hour’s wage, if that. He had seen his tomorrows — in the hungry, gnarled hands outstretched toward the long-dead brazier, bodies shivering in the unsmiling, setting sun of a winter’s day. Long have the men been waiting: all day. But chance has not come that way today. Chance rarely came that way. Any day. Chance has been busy in that other world ... the white world. Where it dwelt, at home among those other beings, who might or might not come with offers of a day’s employ. Where it made its abode — in posh suburbs and beautiful homes and thriving businesses ... forever forsaking the men looking for a day’s work that might give them an hour’s wage. The men from the dry, dusty, wind-flattened, withering shacks they call home. Would always, always call home. No escape.

Such stark sign-posts to his tomorrow. Hope still-born in his heart. As in the hearts of all like him. The million-million lumpen, the lost generation. My son. My son!

That unforgiving moment. My son. Blood pounding in his ears. King! If for a day. If for a paltry five minutes ... a miserable but searing second.

AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT 1S OURS!

AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT IS OURS!

[…] Transported, the crowd responded; not dwelling on the significance of the word, deaf and blind to the seeds from which it sprang, the pitiful powerlessness that had brewed this very moment

And the song in my son’s ears. A song he had heard since he could walk. Even before he could walk. Song of hate, of despair, of rage. Song of impotent loathing.

AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!

AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!

BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!

BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!

[…] The crowd cheers my son on. One settler! One bullet! We had been cheering him on since the day he was born. Before he was born. Long before.

Nongqawuse saw it in that long, long-ago dream: A great raging whirlwind would come. It would drive abelungu to the sea. Nongqawuse had but voiced the unconscious collective wish of the nation: rid ourselves of the scourge.

She was not robbed. She was not raped. There was no quarrel. Only the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss.

One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost.

One girl, far away from home.

The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe.

[…] My son was only an agent, executing the long-simmering dark desires of his race. Burning hatred for the oppressor possessed his being. It saw through his eyes; walked with his feet and wielded the knife that tore mercilessly into her flesh. The resentment of three hundred years plugged his ears; deaf to her pitiful entreaties.

My son, the blind but sharpened arrow of the wrath of his race.

Your daughter, the sacrifice of hers. Blindly chosen. Flung towards her sad fate by fortune’s cruellest slings.

But for the chance of a day, the difference of one sun’s rise, she would be alive today. My son, perhaps not a murderer. Perhaps, not yet.